Making Informed Product Decisions
Devising a solid Customer Engagement Strategy can be a delicate process that needs to be managed carefully. In order to ensure smooth experiences we recommend a blend of methodologies to empower decision making towards a successful outcome:
- Customer-Centric Research: it is best to conduct customer and user research at the early stages for both new and existing product and/or service development. This is highly recommended to be able to strategise on opportunities that better align with real customer needs and expectations.
- Service Design: to visualise and carry out this strategic work.
- Monitoring KPIs measuring the results can help you optimise the overall experience to ensure greater customer satisfaction.
What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?
Customer engagement strategy is the planning and execution of actions to recruit and meaningfully connect with customers over time to the point where they become advocates of your brand.
Customer engagement is difficult to measure but it’s important to try as it’s a great Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for Product-Market Fit. When a customer is truly engaged, there is evidence of adoption of your product, brand loyalty and desirability for your customer experience.
Customer-Centric Research & Service Design
Service Design is an all encompassing methodology for planning, streamlining and optimising your customer’s and user’s experiences. By researching and thinking about the details, this method enables holistic decision-making about how your customers engage, end-to-end, across the brand experience. This ensures the experience with your business, product or service ecosystem is customer-centric, and:
- clear with no important information or steps omitted.
- frictionless where no roadblocks or obstacles are encountered.
- encouraging and engaging, allowing for higher chances of success and customer loyalty.
Research to Inform Decision-Making
The output from this upfront customer-centric research and Service Design should include a thorough analysis of the “current” experience vs. the “proposed” experience. These journeys can be visualised as an insightful Service Blueprint, which often includes a timeline where the interactions and communications between the service provider and the customer can be mapped and integrated.
This in turn ensures touchpoint consistency and delivery to the beat of the customer’s desires and expectations, while securing a more engaging and delightful experience for all involved.
Factoring in KPI’s for Making Decisions
Another important factor when outlining your customer’s journey through your business, products and services, is to measure:
- KPIs (Sales, sign-ups, etc.)
- Customer Satisfaction (NPR Scores, Surveys)
- Metrics and Analytics (Clickthrough-rates, landing pages, etc.)
These metrics inform to better understand and make decisions about what’s working and what’s not, before, during and after the work is carried out.
Ongoing Monitoring & Reporting
Over time, it is key to continuously monitor the data which will ultimately empower your ongoing calibration and optimisation of the customer experience. Monitor and report customer engagement through:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems.
- Metrics and Analytics.
- Customer service and call centre logs.
These can also shed light into what current obstacles are being faced by your customers, how frequently, under what circumstances and having a good understanding of these factors can help determine the best course of action.
Engaging Customer Experiences
Great products and services require 100s if not 1000s of decisions to be made by business, product and development teams. Being aware of this is important and utilising customer-centric research, service design and KPIs can help increase the chances of success and the delivery of great customer experiences over time.
Do you need help with delivering great customer experiences? Get in touch with us via ProductStrategy.ie where we can you deliver product success faster.
